by Minkman, Jen
Hannah shook her head. “No, not like that. The third time I was having the same dream, there were three shadows waiting for me at the foot of that hill where I’m leaving Josh behind. The same three apparitions I saw in the vision at Rainbow Bridge.”
Emily nodded slowly. “You said one of them turned into an animal?”
“A coyote. And those sinister apparitions haven’t left since. They keep invading my dreams. Last night, I dreamed I was looking out over Canyon de Chelly, facing the wind. The three creatures were approaching me, their faces distorted, looking like coyotes with bared fangs. Then, all of a sudden, there were bugs crawling all over my body. In the dream, it felt like I was about to jump into the abyss and commit suicide so I could finally have peace.”
Talking about her nightmares was useful for linking up dream events, but it also made her relive all the terror she’d felt. Hannah shuddered.
Amber tapped her shoulder. “You think those aura-less men have something to do with your dreams?” she asked gingerly.
Hannah nodded defeatedly. “Yeah. It’s like my dreams blend in with reality. Those three entities are after me in real life. Not just in my dreams.”
Emily put her hand on Amber’s arm. “You saw something strange? Is that why you wanted to know about people without auras?”
“When I ran into Hannah in the supermarket on Saturday, I told her I can see auras. In turn, she told me about her weird dreams and her feelings of paranoia.”
“I bumped into these three men in Safeway who creeped me out big time,” Hannah explained. “I just didn’t know why. I mean, two of them were talking in the aisle next to me and they had the exact same voices as the drunk guys who harassed me, but they looked nothing like them. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling something didn’t quite add up.”
“So Hannah asked me to walk back to Safeway with her and have a look at those men,” Amber added.
“And you saw something weird,” Emily concluded.
“You bet I did. Those three had no auras. Nothing, nada, zip.”
Emily fell silent for a long time, mindlessly doodling underneath her notes. When the silence became too oppressive for her, Hannah cleared her throat. “So, your thoughts?”
“Have you felt threatened by other people besides those men at the supermarket lately?” Emily asked without looking up. Her voice was so serious it scared Hannah.
“Well – not people. Coyotes. Three of them, near the cabin on Saturday, just before we went to the rez,” she mumbled. And then she remembered the twins and their dad at the parking lot, waiting for her to leave, staring her down like they were about to murder her. She swallowed. “Actually, I have. Groups of three. I just thought it was in my mind. I thought I was going nuts.”
“If I’m right about this, that’s exactly what they want you to believe.” Emily grabbed her hand. “Please listen to me. You’re not crazy.”
Hannah nodded curtly. “Okay. So what the heck is going on?”
“I think you’ve become the target of something I don’t even want to say out loud,” Emily whispered.
The hairs on Hannah’s arms prickled. Emily had such a grim look on her face she almost felt like running, just so she wouldn’t have to listen to whatever came next.
“Yenaldlooshi,” Emily spoke, almost inaudibly. “Skinwalkers.”
They were all completely silent for a moment.
“What’s that?” Amber whispered.
“They’re witches or warlocks – chindi. They never work alone, but in threes. The Diné don’t speak their name aloud, because it invokes them or attracts misfortune. Skinwalkers use black magic to change into coyotes so they can harass and terrorize people. If powerful enough, they can also change into other beings or copy other people’s appearances. Often, they will use their mental power to drive you insane. They influence your thoughts to make you believe you’re crazy, or to make you harm or kill yourself. It’s the nastiest form of ánt’iihnii – witchcraft.”
Hannah couldn’t help giving Emily a completely stumped look. Despite the heat, she suddenly felt cold as ice. Things like these didn’t exist. Right? At least, not in her world. On the other hand – Emily’s story was beyond bizarre, but at least it accounted for what she felt. So she wasn’t crazy – she was cursed. Under a spell. Chased by supernatural beings.
“I know it sounds impossible,” Emily went on, an insecure quiver in her voice.
Hannah swallowed. “No. I believe you. I really do. But you know, stuff like this doesn’t happen in my life. I have such a different background from yours – no yarns about magic and mystery told by ancestors. My mother never even bothered to pretend Santa existed.”
“Do you think the dreams are all caused by some sort of curse?” Amber wanted to know.
“I’m sure of it,” Emily replied. “You started having the dreams when you first met the three warlocks. Skinwalkers can use their powers to read people’s minds, to break into their thoughts.”
Hannah shivered, thinking back to the moment she’d heard a coyote howl near Rainbow Bridge. Maybe Josh had felt something was wrong with her. Was that why he’d looked so scared?
“So, those drunk guys – and the men at Safeway – and those coyotes near my house – they’re all the same three people?”
She remembered the way her attackers had moved. How much their behavior had reminded her of a pack of wolves. Actually, she knew the answer to her own question. Her gut feeling hadn’t betrayed her, but she couldn’t quite grasp the truth.
“It’s just too unreal,” she whispered, as Emily nodded. “I know it’s true, I know you’re right, but my brain can’t process it.”
“Why are they after Hannah?” Amber blurted out, sounding rebellious. “What has she ever done to those monsters?”
“Usually, they choose their victims out of revenge, or they’ve been bribed to target someone.”
Hannah collapsed back into her chair. She had absolutely no clue why anyone would want to put a spell on her, least of all a Navajo. “Have you heard about this happening before? A biligaana cursed by skinwalkers?”
“Can’t say I have. People are still terrified of them on the rez, especially in backwater villages. There’s tons of stories about people being harassed by yenaldlooshi, and they happened quite recently. But you don’t hear a lot about this kind of thing outside Navajo Nation.”
“Can I stop it?” Hannah’s hands balled into fists. “How do I fight them?”
“If you know who the skinwalker is, you can call out his real name when he attacks you in his coyote form. That will kill him.”
“How is she supposed to do that?” Amber threw in. “They keep shape-shifting!”
“I never said it was easy.”
Hannah refused to give up. “Okay. What else?”
“Not much. The only other way to stop them is to shoot them with bullets dipped in white ash. That will incapacitate them for a while or even kill them sometimes. But you don’t need to be that radical. Their influence can be weakened by using certain herbal extracts.”
Emily rummaged around in her bag and pulled out a traditional medicine bundle. It was a small bag made of deer leather, with frills at the bottom decorated with little blue and red beads. “I brought this for you. The beads have a symbolic value. The stitching on the front depicts a sandpainting used in the Evil Way Ceremony, to ban evil spirits. The pouch contains corn pollen, cedar ash and dried juniper berries. That should be enough to protect you for a while.”
“You suspected this was going on?” Hannah asked, her eyebrows arched. “Or do you carry things like that around all the time?”
“Well, I heard you mentioning shadows turning into coyotes during our lunch together, and that made me think. I talked to Sani and I asked him for help. He gave me advice on what to do if the problem turned out to be related to skinwalkers.”
So Emily had visited the village hataalii. The man who had such a big influence on Josh – the only person who knew what
had happened during his vision quest. Sani, who burdened Josh too much with rituals and traditions of all kinds. She didn’t want to be helped by him – in fact, all she wanted was to separate Josh from his old hataalii sidekick and teach him how to communicate a little bit more with the world around him – but her options were limited. At this juncture, she could use all the help she could get.
“Thank you so much.” Hannah put the bag on the table. When she touched it, a wonderful, tingling feeling spread through her body, so it was obvious the pouch was having a positive effect. Maybe she could put it on a cord and wear it around her neck, underneath her shirt. At any rate, she’d put it by her bed tonight, for lack of a dreamcatcher.
Emily got up. “Who wants coffee?”
Amber and Hannah raised their hands in silent unison.
While Emily was banging away at making them drinks in the kitchen, Amber leaned into Hannah. “You know – those dreams you’re having about Josh? I can’t shake the feeling they’re trying to tell you something, but these skinwalker creeps break into your dreams and turn them into nightmares. I mean, why would a bunch of witches want to make you dream about a guy you’re in love with?”
“Beats me. I thought Josh was a recurring theme because I think about him a lot.”
Amber frowned. “But then why would it be set in the past?”
“Care to share your theory?”
Amber fidgeted with her red hair. “Well, I think you’ve experienced all the things you’re seeing for real.”
Hannah blinked. “Huh?” she said unintelligently.
Amber hesitated. “Maybe you know him from a past life. Something like that. It would explain the entwined aura thing.”
“I have to catch a breather.” Hannah rubbed her face. “One minute I have this run-off-the-mill simple little life, and the next thing I know, I’m caught up in some bizarre folklore tale featuring witches and reincarnation.”
She got up when she heard her cell phone buzzing in the kitchen, darting inside to read the text message she’d received.
“hey sis! u OK down there? it’s nice & hot on the rez. josh = walking around w/ a wide smile plastered to his face all day long. it’s starting to get on my nerves ;) ”
She bit back a laugh, quickly texting back she was fine. Ben never failed to cheer her up. She suddenly missed him terribly, already regretting the fact she couldn’t tell him Em’s story about the skinwalkers. Ben was so down-to-earth he couldn’t even board a plane. If she sprung these myths about witches and black magic on him, he’d cart her off to the nearest loony bin. Still, she looked forward to seeing him again on Friday. Plus, the fact Josh seemed to be in the best of moods ever since he kissed her was touching.
When Emily and Amber went back to the neighboring cabin to check on Ivy, Hannah made her way to the living room and dug up the leather cord from the dreamcatcher stuff Josh had given to her. He surely wouldn’t miss a small piece of string from the heap of accessories.
With careful fingers, she tied the cord around the top of the medicine bundle, putting it around her neck and underneath her clothes. It was amazing how powerful the thing was – she felt strong, and so completely different compared to this morning, even if she now knew that evil witches were after her. Their spell had made her feel anxious, suppressing her natural instinct to fight. But now she was ready for battle. Sani’s remedy was doing its job perfectly.
12.
That night, there were no dreams. At least no dreams Hannah could remember. She woke up without the usual headache – as a precaution, she’d just taken a homeopathic sedative Emily had given her – and stretched her legs and arms. The kitchen door slammed shut in the next room, so Emily had probably just left for work.
“Hannah?” she suddenly heard Amber’s voice through the door. “You awake yet?”
“Yeah, only just.” She got up and stepped into the kitchen, where she found Amber sitting at the table.
“Did you have a good night’s sleep?” the neighbor girl asked.
“Yup. Smooth sailing. No nightmares.” She grinned at Amber. “So, you girls made any plans to meet up later?”
“We’re just going to hang out tonight,” Amber replied, clearly trying to assume a carefully neutral tone. “ I’ll be staying here for the next couple days. My parents are taking Ivy to Window Rock, but I don’t mind lounging around here.”
“Let me get this straight. You’re skipping a trip to Window Rock so you can bum around with us? You are so in love,” Hannah established dryly.
Amber couldn’t help giggling. “Okay, guilty as charged. There’s just something about Navajo people, you know?
“So, what do your parents think of Em?”
“Oh, they love her. I can tell.”
“You told them that you two are an item?”
“Don’t have to. They’re not blind.” Amber got up from the breakfast table. “By the way, I have to go. I promised I’d spend some time with them before they’re off to Window Rock at noon. See you tonight, okay?”
“Say hi to your family from me,” Hannah called after her.
As soon as she’d scarfed down her breakfast, Hannah went into Ben’s bedroom to drag out his laptop and USB modem again. This was going to be expensive, but fortunately, Ben would only see the bills after he got home. She just had to know more about the history of Navajo Nation, now that she was slowly starting to believe she’d dreamed about real past events.
After doing a Google search on ‘Navajo History’ she clicked on a few links that looked interesting. “The Long Walk,” she mumbled to herself, scrolling through a page filled with details about the cruel transportation of Navajo natives to a reservation in the east of the country, at which they were forced to walk for days without pause. It had happened just after the Civil War. Before that, Mexicans had still been active in Navajo territory. Hannah pulled the laptop closer when her eyes fell on a description of Mexicans stealing people to turn them into slaves – entire villages had been ransacked, women and children abducted to serve in the mines. The website featured some scans of black-and-white photographs of soldiers wearing uniforms that looked strikingly familiar. Her heart started thumping even louder when she saw some old pictures of Navajo villages built just after the Navajo people’s release from the reservation in the east. The houses looked exactly the same as in her dreams. Octagonal, low constructions with dark clay on the outside.
Oh my God. So now she knew. It wasn’t just her imagination, and those skinwalkers were probably not making her dream about the past either. If this was true – if she really knew Josh from a past lifetime – shouldn’t she tell him?
She cringed. Not the most brilliant of ideas right now. They’d just shared a few kisses together – hardly the right moment to claim they’d already shared an entire life together. Josh would probably think she was a sucker for predestination and get out while he still could.
Still, she couldn’t let things rest. Even though Amber and Emily tried to distract her by taking her out that afternoon and keeping quiet about the skinwalker curse, she couldn’t stop thinking about her – now absent – dreams about the past.
On Friday morning, she finally decided to go back to the Page library and bury herself in history books. If that didn’t help, she could ask Nick for help. After all, he’d been reading up on Navajo history a lot.
“You’re all set for a day trip to remember?” Emily asked dryly, when Hannah clomped out of her bedroom with a shoulder bag crammed full of notebooks, pens and a big bottle of water.
“Yeah, I’m off to the library. I want to read up on Navajo history, now that my dreams about the past have stopped.”
“Ah. Because of the reincarnation hypothesis,” Emily nodded. They’d talked about it last night, Amber playing the part of talk show host, making her case for her past-life theory.
“Well, yeah. I really want to find out whether all those images I’ve been seeing are real memories. Maybe not the most exciting trip ever, but hey.”
“Why don’t you just take Ben’s laptop to Grassroots?” Amber asked. “They have free WiFi there. Seems a lot easier than perusing books in the library.”
“Are you kidding? Ben’s laptop is carbon-dated. There’s no WiFi adapter on that thing,” Hannah complained. “He hasn’t bought new stuff in years. He’d rather wait till things disintegrate before he replaces anything.”
Emily suppressed a giggle. “Poor you. Well then, the library it is.”
The three girls cleaned up the kitchen. Emily and Amber went on a trip to Water Hole Canyon, while Hannah drove off to Page Library to plow her way through piles of books, seated on the very same couch where she’d met Nick the week before. Her cell phone was switched off. She’d called her mother in Alaska – who was staying with their aunt for the summer – for a quick chat, but now it was time to leave the modern world behind for a while.
The hours flew by. Hannah completely lost herself in the nineteenth-century history of the reservation and the Diné people. She was so focused on her books that she forgot to have lunch altogether. When she finally switched on her phone again and read a text from Ben saying they were on their way back, she felt weak with hunger. The good thing was that she had ten pages of notes. All the info she’d gathered in the library made her head spin. The more she’d learned about Diné history, the more she’d gotten convinced she really was seeing images from the past in her dreams. The descriptions of the tumultuous time period between 1800 and 1840 on Navajo soil exactly matched her dream experience – she’d lived an unsafe, troublesome and dangerous life.
On her way back to the Datsun, Hannah’s stomach no longer twisted with hunger pangs, but with nerves. She’d see Josh again, and last time they spoke he’d said he needed time. How would he react to her after three days of separation?
Heart in throat, she drove back to the log cabins and bit her lip when she saw the empty driveway. Okay, so they weren’t back yet. No problem – she was in dire need of a fresh shower and some serious lunch anyway.
